MA campaigns and your experience
 

Hello everybody, I haven't GMed since early 2012 and I have been thinking about running a Martial Arts campaign. The plot I want to try is that the PCs either represent a real world style, or even their own style if they can make one up that isn't too outlandish, and they fight other people around the world.

For example, one player who is representing say, Taekwondo, might go to the middle east and fight one of the worlds best wrestlers in a close to no rules contest. Or maybe someone representing Boxing (I know it's not usually considered a martial art, but I would allow it) might fight someone from Brazil representing Capoeira or BJJ.

Now, what I have a problem with is redundancy. I want to make all the fights exciting and not seem the same, so I wanted some suggestions on how to do this. I was thinking that traveling around the world would represent it's own adventure but I still want to focus on finding the world's toughest fighter in a sense. I would like to know what you guys have done in MA or any other kind of campaign to keep combat exciting.


So again, I am open to suggestions, and the point limit is 150 points with 75 points in disadvantages. If you guys think a higher point limit with cinematic skills and techniques allowed would make it better, I might allow it. If armed styles being allowed and some leeway being used with unarmed against armed would also changes things for like say range and different tactics having to be used might make things change, I might also allow that.

TL;DR: I need help on making my MA campaign not too redundant in combat.

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

I think that this idea of your could serve as the platform that a game could be built upon. Perhaps the players each have something at stake in this global Street Fighter type tournament. If it is just a series of one-on-one MMA fights, the novelty of learning the rules may fade after a few hours of gaming.

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

My experience:

I prefer a more cinematic approach. I think realistic martial arts can work (particularly in a tournament setting), but particularly in a modern setting, people want the more mystical arts to DO something, plus they want their characters flashy. I have a good experience with Chambara rules.

I highly recommend signature moves. They speed up play, allow for complex moves without slowing things down, and can help define characters. Also, the act of coming up with them will help create a sense of the "strategy" of the character. In Cherry Blossom Rain, all my samurai fight very differently and focus on very different strategies, despite all using the same weapon and effectively the same sets of skills. A lot of that variety revolves around technique, attributes, advantages and perks, and is defined well in signature moves.

I also have a few house rules regarding evaluate, defensive attacks, ripostes and beats, but they're probably not pertinent to your situation.

EDIT: Oh, and to my surprise, I have found that fights are never boring. I can't really articulate why that is, though.

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

Signature Moves?

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

I like this suggestion, and with Mailanka suggesting signature moves and mystical stuff I think I can use both of these to allow more roleplaying. I also came up with another idea, how about these people fight for things like money and valuable things and to protect say families, how about they fight to see who fights in a intergalactic tournament which will allow even more diversity with different races and therefore different martial arts

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

I was in a MA campaign run by whswhs (Fencing), and in an Arena game on rpol. I think the key to making it full of rp goodness...is having players who are interested in lots of rp goodness. If the players are into rp, then there will be RP.

This also is a part of how to make combat exciting for RP types. Combat strategy has to be a part of the characterization.

So for example, I decided my fencer--Overconfident, Self-Esteem Issues hidden by Arrogance--would do lots of Committed Attacks...and would not ever retreat...sideslip? slip? yes. Retreat? Not if he could at all help it. So it became interesting for me to think about my characterization and how that would manifest in combat. So all of the combats became not only about the fight itself, but also about a way of exploring my character's morality, personality, etc.

In the Arena game, which was not at all about RP'ing, I had lots and lots of fun exploring how my character's personality would manifest in the different combats. From warning a foe about a trap to waiting until a foe stood up again before attacking...or whatever.

As a method actor player, I could still find interest in combat after combat by making sure that combat and character are linked.

If I were a butt kicker player, the combat would probably be enough by itself. If I were a Tactician, I think that as long as the combats had interesting tactical challenges (Pits! Traps! etc.) that would help for that.
For the Storyteller, you'll want some sort of overarching narrative (which could be supplied by the players themselves...for example, my Arena fighter had a couple of motivations that could spin into narrative: he wanted to earn enough money to buy his own pirate ship so he could fight the Megalans and free Araterre, and he wanted to represent Araterre well so that he could gain sympathy for his homeland while diminishing people's attitude towards Megalos). If you had some some sort of story-ish hook, or some sort of thing (money) that players could use to craft their own narrative, that would also be fine. I find interesting non-combatant NPCs are helpful here.

MA tournaments may feature combat, but they can still have all the elements that please all of the different types of players that Robin Laws talks about.

I ran a Traveller game that had one adventure that featured an MA tournament. Of course each of the contestants was sponsored by various larger political factions so the tournament was a proxy political war. Enter the PCs. Of course someone wants to hire them fight for Faction A, and it becomes really important that Faction B's fighter not win. During the tournament, the observant PCs learned a lot about galactic politics. But they were also confronted with some mysteries and some moral conundrums (do they cheat?) There was a great moment when they decided to spike the water bottle of the Imperial Naval Contestant with performance enhancing drugs and then calling for a drug test. The contestant tested positive and that was a great blow to the honor of the Imperial Navy and caused a lot of ripples. There was blackmail, fighting, increasing tensions among fans of different factions that threatened to boil over into riots.

Good times! The tournament was all fighting...but the fighting was an ends in and of itself, but also a means to illuminate something about the wider galactic politics, and also about the character of individual combatants, including the PCs.

Interestingly, the Pilot PC got to the Final match of the tournament (mostly through lots of cheating on the part of the other PCs)...and he declared that he would not allow any cheating for the final match (one, the observation had gotten too hot, but also because he wanted to win fair and square and was never comfortable with the cheating). The other players thought he was crazy and there was some great rp around that situation. In the end, he went in without cheating...and lost! But then the more...morally flexible PCs leaked a recording of the sponsor of the winner attempting to bribe the PCs into throwing the fight, thus undermining any political advantage the winner's faction gained by it.

It was really fun...but that was because we had great RPers, designing the combatants fighting style as an extension of character, and having the combatants express larger story.

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

Further to trooper6's comments, one of the things I did in Salle d'Armes was to have the campaign set in a fencing academy. Many sessions included a scene of training, in which the player characters practiced some specific move against each other. This helped the players gain more familiarity with the different moves and how they worked, and it made the personality of their master important.

Bill Stoddard

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

I really like this, it's not even funny how much I'm thinking about this. I don't really have any Storytellers in my group, but we have had some great roleplaying before. I do think this cheating and moral questions thing will work and I changed the concept so that its a group representing country or a martial art now. For example there can be a team Brazil and they have say some Capoeristas and BJJers but they might have conflicting issues if one of my PCs decide to wanna be Brazil. Or there could be a group of Freestyle wrestlers but there can be conflicting issues due to say an Afghanistan native and a American ex soldier being on the team traveling the world. The purpose of the tournament is to show what martial art is best and I was thinking maybe later on there could be some intergalactic or interplanetary competition too

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

A signature move is a description of an action that doesn't take longer than a turn. For example, a rapid-strike Feint-and-attack, or a deceptive targeted all-out-attack for the eye, and so on.

The idea is to take your listed skills and damage values, think your way through some of the more complex mechanics of how your attack will look, write it all down (never seems longer than a paragraph), noting the actual skill values and damage inflicted. And then give it a name and a bit of a description.

In actual gameplay, all you have to do is glance at your paper with signature moves and you'll know all the details to how your complex action works. Very good for getting GURPS noobs into some rather detailed GURPS combat without scaring the pants off of them.

Example:

This is from an NPC so it has less detail as its for my personal use. This is derived from Yoshiro's Broadsword -20 (Dual Weapon Attack-20) and Shortsword-20 (Dual Weapon Attack-20). It applies a -1 because it's a dual weapon attack, and an additional -3 from a deceptive attack. He normally deals 1d+5 damage with his katana and 1d+4 with his wazikashi, but these are lowered due to it being a defensive attack. And, of course, the defensive attack grants him +1 to his defense (which starts at 14).

But we don't have to come up with all this crap in the middle of a session. I just look, see Dance of the Crane, and use it. Complexity simplified.

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

Perfect idea for those of us that tend to panic and lock up when rushed to decide.

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

Particularly in a martial arts game.

When I run, say, an action game or a military game, the gameplay seems to revolve mainly around positioning, mobility, and getting your shots off. What you tend to hear the most are: "I aim" or "I shoot" or "I run and gun." I'm not saying it isn't fun, it is, it's just that the maneuver choices aren't especially complex.

But the whole point of kung fu games is saying things like "I make a Committed Spin-Kick as a riposte against my opponent's leg while using the acrobatic kicks perk." while the other guy says "Oh yeah? Well I shift to Defensive grip on my staff using Grip Mastery and parry your kick while side-stepping. Did I mention I have the counter-attack technique maxed? You're goin' down suckah!"

And that's hard to do in the spur of the moment without slowing the game down or causing the less mechanically adept to stare stupidly at their sheet. Hence, signature moves.

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

Note that it's probably very unrealistic to expect people who know that they are about to go into a free-for-all fight against people of multiple styles to continue to focus on just one martial art. Most competative martial arts are highly specialised and therefore have serious weaknesses when used in a situation where the rules of that sport don't apply.

Taekwondo stylists and boxers will be helpless against grapplers with a good ground game if they don't bother to learn defences and counters.

A sensible martial artist planning to fight opponents with different background and training would make sure to cross-train in several styles. If he had advance knowledge of his opponent, he'd probably try to cross train in his specific style, and even failing that, it would make sense to pick up a few styles with wide application in the world of combat sports. A striking style like boxing or (Burmese/Thai/Malaysian/Other SE Asian) kickboxing; something allowing standing grapples and defences against them, such as jujutsu, judo or catch/shoot wrestling and a ground-grappling style like BJJ, sambo or Graeco-Roman wrestling.

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

I did think about that Icelander, but I am thinking there should be some way for strikers to win, I'm just trying to think how to balance them without everyone basically being a street fighter or MMA fighter. Does anybody have any idea how to balance strikers and grapplers? Or is it just better to go from teams representing martial arts to teams representing countries?

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

I'd allow cinematic techniques and rules. The bulk of those benefit flashy, cool-looking striking techniques, while reality often boils down to two guys grappling one another. Since reality already supports grappling well, cinematic rules should benefit striking nicely.

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

Hasn't it been written around here that striking is best when it's one against many? As grappling just allows his friends to kick you at will?

Bit cinematic advantages help, especially if it only takes one hit to reliably eliminate a single foe.

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

Ground grappling is of limited value against a mob. Standing grappling is very useful, as it lets you walk somebody between you and his pals (see Shoving People Around) or throw him into other people (with a shove, Judo throw, or Throws from Locks). My experience running GURPS with Martial Arts in use is that standing strikes, standing grappling, and ground grappling break down about 50/40/10 in many-on-few encounters where high-stats PCs are the ones outnumbered. That turns around to something like 30/60/10 when weapons (like knives) get involved. There are definitely memorable ground-grappling scenes, but they're all one-on-one – and they're memorable mostly because people distributed points assuming the previous breakdowns and were caught without good ground skills, making it a struggle.

Fezzik's "I've been specializing in groups" isn't entirely goofy. My experience is that players do tend to distribute their points that way.

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

So what skill do you use specifically for ground grappling as opposed to standing grappling?

Bill Stoddard

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

The way GURPS breaks things down, Wrestling is more useful than Judo on the ground, because Judo's "big move" is a throw that's mostly valuable when standing, while Wrestling gives a ST bonus that's very useful if you plan to try the sorts of "long actions" that decide ground fighting: choke, pin, wrench limb, etc. However, the big differences aren't in skills, but in perks and techniques. Traditional Jujutsu is a Judo/Karate style that offers Low Fighting and Power Grappling; BJJ is a Judo/Wrestling style with Ground Fighting, Low Fighting, six lower-body moves that you'll mostly use from your back (Leg Throw, Lower-Body Arm Lock, Lower-Body Head Lock, Lower-Body Leg Lock, Scissors Hold, and Triangle Choke), and perks such as Ground Guard, Power Grappling, and Technique Adaptation (Ground Fighting). Sambo has a similar profile to BJJ.

Styles that favor standing action also have their tricks. They often include the Rapid Retraction perk to avoid limb captures that lead to being dumped, and the Acrobatic Stand technique to recover from being dumped and not pounced upon. Some even limit their grappling training to Clinch and Neck Control, relying on a really high striking skill to make these perks all they need to be effective.

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

What you are proposing is essentially an MMA tournament, though. Having fighters train for only striking or only grappling makes about as much sense as having a pentathlete train only in riding or only in running. That doesn't happen in real life. You might get someone who is best at one aspect of the sport, but he'll need to train the other aspects as well.

In my opinion, country-based or gym-based teams make more sense than style-specific teams. That being said, real MMA matches often have one fighter being better at ground-grappling and the other better at striking, or something similar. Not everyone has to fight the same way, as long as everyone is prepared for the rules that actually are in place.

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

I'm no expert, but I'd even go so far as to say that not everyone has to fight the same way, but everyone should put at least a little something into those otherwise neglected skills lest they find themselves working from defaults.

It's the same story I have with folks coming from D&D to GURPS, who want a traditional fighter - "What do you mean my skill with the flail is 6-?" because they didn't invest the, oh, 10-12 points you need to have decent base skills in the most common of weapons.

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

Ok, I agree with Icelander and think country based teams woud be better and that could lead to the political conflicts that trooper6 was talking about from his Traveller game.

Looking at the rules, it does sem to me that you would need a MUCH higher striking skill and clinch perks to be able to easily defeat a seasoned grappler. So I think just doing MMA would be better with some people just being strikers or sprawl and brawlers and another fighter being a ground and pound fighter or as long as it doesn't bog things down too much, a submission specialist.


Has anyone ever had a problem with two grapplers taking too long in combat? And also, what should I do for rules? I was thinking that anything goes except for weapons (might use boots and a myrmex equivalent to make things more interesting). My logic behind this is that brawling would become more valuable if there are little to no rules with there being lower points needed to not only get a high skill, but there would be more left to put into techniques such as eye gouge and knee drop if there isn't any rules.


Also, an even bigger question to ask is, should I make the tournament a intergalactic one? I was just thinking that there would be even more diversity, and my players want to make unique styles, and what else could help more with uniqueness than having different anatomy and environment to develop new martial arts?

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

Are you aiming for a fairly "realistic" game or something more like a video fighting game or shonen anime?

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

Thank you.

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

I personally wouldn't go intergalactic. It feels like a bit much.

If you really want to go for specific styles...I'd go historical. Early MMA had people that were specialized in one thing, though that went away pretty quickly.

So if I really wanted people who specialized in one style, I'd go with a Cold War era, secret Unarmed Fighting competition.

So PCs would be representatives of a country, and since it is old, PCs would be more likely to be specialized in one style.

You could also enforce come of this mechanically. You could say that PCs can only have 1 Style. They can buy skills outside of their Styles, of course, but if you very strictly enforce the Perk Limits, and the "you can't buy if techniques outside of your style recommendations, etc. that will result in difference in feeling between the fighters.

Generally, I recommend rereading Martial Arts in detail.

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

Alright trooper6, if I do the Cold War era thing, what martial art would the US team use? Except for Boxing and various Wrestling styles, I can't think of anything that Americans would be likely to use.

I was also thinking that this martial art tourney could be what resolves the Cold War since nuclear war would be obviously avoided in the long run.

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

Judo is possible. Judo was trendy in the United States in that era. It actually seems to have referred to a range of Japanese martial arts (which pretty much were "martial arts" as far as most Americans knew); one of the blows that GURPS classes under Karate was then called a "judo chop."

Bill Stoddar

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

Judo and Karate were well known enough in the West by the 1960s to be featured in both The Avengers and Bond films...which are British, granted, but would still be available for Americans.

If you set it later, you also have Bruce Li's Jeet Kun Do...but also remember America is a land of immigrants, which means Americans could have access to any number of styles.

I'm not the type who would say, "Americans can only have this style or that style." I'd probably let them choose which ever single style they want as long as they can justify it with character backstory.

But I tend to go for "real character" types, rather than "archetypes" types.

If I were going for a black/white archetype thing, I'd pick a couple of countries and assign them one or two stereotypical styles, and only allow the PCs to pick among them. But again, I personally tend to go for a different sort of vibe.

Also, I'm thinking of that film, Gymkata, where fighters from around the world had to compete in some fight tournament/obstacle course in order to secure some sort of military rights from the country hosting country. That could be a plot hook to steal.

Anyway, I'd say, think a bit more about what sort of game style you want. Do you want a bigger than life archetypal game (the national stereotypes in GURPS WW2 might be useful here), or a more shades of gray sort of game.

How you do the set up will vary based on that.

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

I swear, before I saw this post, about making a crack about Gymkata.

If you told me that Gymkata was supposed to be a stealth parody of martial arts movies, I'd believe you.

Mind you, I'd love to play or GM a campaign set around the "invited to a tournament" plot hook. Anyone ever tried that?

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

I don't think that's actually true. Or at least, prior to Austin Powers, I don't recall hearing, and I know I didn't find it in any of my research. Do you have a source for that?

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

Just memory; I remember Lucy van Pelt threatening one of the other characters—it might have been Linus—with a "judo chop." But I don't have collected Peanuts on my shelves. But I remember seeing it a long time before Austin Powers was thought of. Can't quote you sources, though.

Bill Stoddard

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

I know I heard it as a child, and I'm certainly not young enough for that movie to have been from then.

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

As an oldskool Peanuts fan with no books handy (they're sitting in my Dad's collection 2,500 miles from here), I can soft/anecdotally back this up. In GURPS and realistic terms, she would probably have delivered a DX Punch or Brawling-Default Hammer Fist if she followed through on it, but Lucy actually said that.

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

That's good to know, but "Peanuts" wouldn't denote common acceptance of the term outside of a humorous situation. I was wondering if it was ever stated serious. Karate chop certainly was.

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

Google NGrams has the phrase "judo chop" being used starting about 1952 reaching its high point in 1972. So is certainly pre-dates Austin Powers.

Some examples:
"In a pre-bout interview Tuesday (15) night with Duke Keomuka, Japanese wrestler from Houston, Boland was on the receiving end of a judo chop to the neck that knocked him across the ring."
--"KRLD-TV Boland bowled by Jap" Billboard Magazine, Jan 26 1952, pg. 4

There are a lot more examples on the NGrams.

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

I'm assuming that it was used by people ignorant of the actual martial arts. However, the fact that it was in somewhat common use is evidence toward my claim that judo was somewhat familiar in the United States in the Cold War era, and therefore could be available to an American MMA combatant.

Bill Stoddard

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

Indeed, oh and also according to wikipedia there were 5 American competitors in Judo in the 1964 Olympics. So...Judo was already widespread enough by 1964 to be in the Olympics. It certainly would be available to American cold war combatants.

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

By the time the cold war happened Brazil already had a strong Vale Tudo scene because of the gracie family.

they used to raid other style dojos and challenge the toughest guys to an no holds barred fight, and almost everytime they beat them with their jiu jitsu, this caused the gym to lose prestige and the students flocked to the gracie academies.

At the same time, the marters of all these karate, muai thay, TKD, wrestling, etc... gyms, started crosstraining with each other and even some jiu jitsu masters left the gracie mafia and teached them some moves, lots of people hated the gracies around this time.

As a result we had something similar to modern MMA 30-40 years before it really happened, albeit much smaller, niche, and quite hidden from mainstream.

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

I think there was an episode of Jonny Quest where Hadji employs a judo throw. Jonny is impressed and asks Hadji where he learned it. "From a Marine," Hadji replies.

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

Note that judo has been an Olympic sport since 1964 (with the exception of 1968, when it was absent), so it would be available during much of the Cold War era to pretty much any nationality. It was commonplace in Icelandic gyms since before I was born and I really doubt that the US, with all their immigrants and their huge population, was behind us in this.

On the other hand, a Far East origin is not necessary for something to count as a martial art. Boxing and catch/shoot wrestling are just as good or better than many exotic martial arts as a foundation for an MMA fighter. Even Graeco-Roman wrestling is a decent beginning and probably about as good as judo.

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

Is that really under dispute? Check Martial Arts, page 8, under "1930s" - by the 30s Judo was all over the world, and widely practiced. You don't need to wait until the Cold War.

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

Thanks, that's helpful. I wasn't aware of how widely that inaccuracy had been propagated.

Well, I like to point out that there was a mixed-martial arts fight in a major motion picture in the 1970s - Enter the Dragon. Bruce submits Sammo Hung, while wearing minimal protection and what we'd now call MMA gloves, to open the movie. It's dramatic and over the top, but I've tapped someone with that same neck crank, albeit up against the cage and looking much less awesome in the process.

It didn't hit the mainstream until the nineties, but it was around for a long, long time, and of course it existed in ancient times before going into a lull. It's a mistake to think there was no no-holds barred fighting to be found prior to UFC 1.



Going back to the original post, I'd just say go cinematic, and aim for more Bloodsport or The Best of the Best than realistic fighting. Jack the points up a bit, and let the strikers buy Rapid Retraction, and go crazy.

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

I don't know about the place of judo in American culture in the 1930s. Was it a widespread activity, with schools all over every major city, or was it a niche activity for aficionados of exotic cultures? In the early Cold War era, as I personally experienced it, it had begun to be assimilated into American mainstream culture.

Bill Stoddard

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

Robert E. Howard wrote a story in 1930, "Hard-Fisted Sentiment" in which Steve Costigan fights an English Boxer, a French Savateur, and a Japanese Jujutsu expert--one after another in a single night.

Unfortunately it was never published in his life-time.

But it does show that a Texan in 1930 who had never traveled further than Mexico had heard of Savate and Jujutsu and could come up with the idea mixed martial arts.

Of course Howard was very well read.